Top picks at a glance
The best AEO tools in 2026 are Kaistone for agencies selling AEO as a service — first audit free, and from audit to white-labeled, costed proposal in about ten minutes — Profound for enterprise brand monitoring, Otterly.AI for low-cost prompt tracking, AthenaHQ for a free monitoring tier with an agency pitch workflow, and HubSpot AEO for the cheapest continuous tracking if three engines are enough.
Four patterns stood out during research. First, Claude coverage is rare — most tools skip it entirely or gate it behind enterprise contracts. Second, only one tool bundles a traditional SEO audit with its AEO audit — Kaistone includes one (technical health, on-page SEO, user experience, visibility) with every audit at no extra cost; the AEO-native tools don't audit SEO at all, and the SEO suites sell it as a separate platform. Third, no tool in this comparison documents native white-label reporting first-party except Kaistone — the standard workaround is exporting data to Looker Studio and branding dashboards by hand. Fourth, pricing in this category is rarely one number — credit meters, per-engine add-ons, and demo-gated tiers make real costs hard to compare (more on that below).
AEO tools compared
| Tool | Best for | AI platforms | SEO audit included | White-label | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kaistone (that's us) | Agencies selling AEO services | All — source-level audit (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, …) | Yes — with every audit, free included | Yes — audits & proposals | $19/mo |
| Profound | Enterprise brand monitoring | ChatGPT on Starter; up to 10 engines incl. Claude on Enterprise | No | Not in official docs | $99/mo (billed yearly) |
| Otterly.AI | Budget entry, many client workspaces | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot; Claude/Gemini/AI Mode as paid add-ons | No | No (officially confirmed) | $29/mo |
| Peec AI | European teams, daily tracking, unlimited seats | Any 3 of ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini; Claude not self-serve | No | Not in official docs | $95/mo (€85) |
| Scrunch AI | Monitoring plus agent-ready site delivery | 8 platforms: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Meta AI, Copilot | No | No — reporting via Looker Studio | $250/mo (billed annually) |
| AthenaHQ | Agency pitch workflow on a budget | 5 models free; 9+ on paid incl. Claude, Grok, Copilot | No | Third-party reported only | Free tier; $295/mo Starter |
| HubSpot AEO (+ AEO Grader) | CRM-connected tracking at the lowest price | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini only | No | No | Free grader; $50/mo |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Adding AI tracking to an existing Semrush stack | ChatGPT and Google AI Mode (verified); more reported | Via main Semrush plans | No AI-specific white-label | $99/mo per domain |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Competitive AI share-of-voice research at scale | 7 engines: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok — no Claude | Via base Ahrefs plan | No | $398/mo |
| Conductor | Enterprise SEO + AEO consolidation | ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, AI Overviews | Yes — enterprise SEO suite | No | Not public (demo only) |
Pricing and platform coverage verified on vendor pages, July 2026. "White-label" reflects what vendors document first-party — several are reported to offer more via third-party reviews. "SEO audit included" means bundled with the AEO product itself: Kaistone includes one with every audit; Semrush, Ahrefs, and Conductor offer SEO auditing through their separate main platforms; the AEO-native tools do not audit traditional SEO at all. For Kaistone, "AI platforms" describes the optimization target — its audit is source-level and platform-agnostic — while for monitoring tools it lists the engines they sample with test prompts.
What AEO tools actually do
AEO tools work one or more of three jobs. Monitoring tracks how often AI systems cite or recommend your brand and with what sentiment — most tools on this list are monitoring-first. Auditing explains why visibility is what it is: schema markup, llms.txt, answer-ready content, crawler access, third-party authority. Optimization turns findings into actions — content fixes, technical changes, and for agencies, client deliverables.
If the discipline itself is new to you, start with What is AEO? and AEO vs GEO vs SEO — the short version is that AEO and GEO are the same discipline, and every tool here serves both names.
The tools, reviewed
1. Kaistone
Our product — judge accordinglyKaistone is the only platform on this list built for the agency sales cycle rather than brand monitoring — and it is designed to be the easiest tool here to get from zero to client deliverable. The first audit is free, no credit card, and the full flow takes about ten minutes: the AI Audit Engine audits the source a client's site presents to AI — the signals ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude all rely on — scoring four dimensions (AI readability, answer-ready content, trust & authority, platform presence), the Recommendations Engine turns findings into a prioritized action list, the Project Estimator converts that into a scoped roadmap with phases, hours, and costs, and White Label Reports deliver both audit and proposal under the agency's own logo and colors. Every audit also includes a basic SEO audit — technical health, on-page SEO, user experience, and visibility — at no extra cost, which no other tool in this comparison bundles.
New in 2026: Compare Reports. Every audit is stored, so each client domain builds a history — overall score over time, the delta against the previous audit, and a projected score showing the upside still on the table. Between audits, Kaistone automatically tracks which recommendations were completed, so a fresh audit shows what got fixed since last time and what it moved — a built-in project manager for the engagement, and the client-facing proof that the retainer is working.
What Kaistone deliberately does not do: synthetic prompt runs and continuous share-of-voice monitoring of the kind Profound or Ahrefs specialize in. Kaistone audits the source instead — fix it once and every AI system benefits. Audit history covers progress over time; if you need to track thousands of prompts daily for one enterprise brand, pair Kaistone with a monitoring tool.
- Best for: SEO and digital agencies selling AEO services
- Pricing: from $19/mo, no per-seat fees (plans)
- Try it: first audit free — no credit card
2. Profound
From $99/mo (billed yearly)Profound is the best-known name in AI visibility, with Answer Engine Insights (visibility, citations, sentiment), Prompt Volumes data, and Agent Analytics that shows how AI crawlers hit your site. Its Agency Mode adds separate client workspaces and 30-day pitch workspaces for prospects. The catch is how coverage is tiered: the $99 Starter plan tracks ChatGPT only, Growth ($399/mo) covers three engines, and the full ten-engine coverage — including Claude, Copilot, Grok, and Meta AI — plus API access requires a custom Enterprise contract. Both self-serve plans are billed yearly.
- Best for: Enterprise brand monitoring
- Main limitation: Entry tier is ChatGPT-only; full engine coverage and API are Enterprise-only.
3. Otterly.AI
From $29/moOtterly.AI has the lowest entry price in the category: $29/month for 15 tracked prompts, scaling to Standard ($189/mo, 100 prompts) with unlimited client workspaces and team members — which is why it shows up in so many agency stacks. It adds GEO URL audits, API/MCP access, and a Looker Studio connector for client dashboards. Its own help documentation states there is no native white-label option, and Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Mode tracking cost extra per engine on every tier, so the sticker price climbs as coverage grows.
- Best for: Budget entry, many client workspaces
- Main limitation: No native white-label; three of the seven engines are paid add-ons.
4. Peec AI
From $95/mo (€85)Peec AI is a Berlin-built AI search analytics platform popular with European agencies: visibility, position and sentiment tracking with competitor benchmarking, citation analysis, daily data refresh, and unlimited users on every plan. Starter is $95/€85 per month with 50 prompts and one project; Advanced ($495/€425) handles five projects and multi-country tracking with Looker Studio export. Every self-serve plan caps you at three AI models chosen from a six-model pool — each additional engine is a paid add-on, and Claude isn't offered self-serve at all.
- Best for: European teams, daily tracking, unlimited seats
- Main limitation: Three-model cap per plan; Claude requires Enterprise.
5. Scrunch AI
From $250/mo (billed annually)Scrunch AI covers eight AI platforms — one of the few tools tracking Claude on a self-serve plan — and pairs monitoring with a genuinely different idea: its Agent Experience Platform serves lightweight, machine-readable versions of your site directly to AI crawlers. An Agency Partner Program provides a multi-client workspace and self-serve pitch environments for prospects. There is no free tier, and entry is $250/month billed annually, which positions it clearly at mid-market and above.
- Best for: Monitoring plus agent-ready site delivery
- Main limitation: No free tier; $250/mo annual entry point.
6. AthenaHQ
From Free tier; $295/mo StarterAthenaHQ tracks brand visibility, perception, and citations across nine-plus AI models, with prompt-volume data and Content Agents that act on findings. For agencies it is one of the strongest offers: a free tier covering five models, a Pitch Workspace that produces prospect visibility reports in minutes, and a tiered partner program with volume discounts. Pricing is credit-metered (1 credit = 1 AI response, 3,600/month on the $295 Starter), so costs scale with how much you track — and the advanced trust features (claim review, discrepancy detection, SSO) sit behind custom Enterprise pricing.
- Best for: Agency pitch workflow on a budget
- Main limitation: Credit-metered costs; advanced features gated behind Enterprise.
7. HubSpot AEO (+ AEO Grader)
From Free grader; $50/moHubSpot's free AEO Grader is the best-known entry point in the category: a one-time 0–100 score of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini represent a brand, weighted across sentiment, presence quality, recognition, share of voice, and competition. The paid HubSpot AEO product (launched spring 2026, still in beta) adds continuous monitoring with 25 tracked prompts for $50/month — the only sub-$100 continuous tracker among the tools here — with prompt suggestions drawn from your HubSpot CRM. Coverage is the narrowest on this list: three engines, no Google AI Overviews, no Claude, no Copilot.
- Best for: CRM-connected tracking at the lowest price
- Main limitation: Only 3 engines; the Grader is a one-time snapshot, not tracking.
8. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
From $99/mo per domainSemrush's AI Visibility Toolkit brings prompt tracking, brand performance benchmarking, and an AI Search Site Audit into the platform agencies already use for classic SEO — the main reason to choose it. As a standalone add-on it costs $99/month per domain with 25 tracked prompts (extra prompts $60/month per 50), or it comes bundled in the Semrush One plans from $199/month. First-party documentation confirms ChatGPT and Google AI Mode coverage; reviews report more engines, but Claude and Copilot are not covered, and the per-domain pricing model gets expensive for multi-client agency work.
- Best for: Adding AI tracking to an existing Semrush stack
- Main limitation: Per-domain pricing scales fast; verified coverage is two engines.
9. Ahrefs Brand Radar
From $398/moBrand Radar's edge is data scale: it draws on a database of 403M+ organic prompts and lets you analyze any brand's AI visibility — yours or a competitor's — across unlimited projects, with share-of-voice trends and competitive benchmarking. Tiers run $398/month for select platforms and $699/month for all seven engines with 2,500 custom prompt checks. There is no Claude coverage, no white-label or multi-client reporting for agency delivery, and independent reviews note the sampled prompt database can undercount actual brand mentions. A free AI Visibility Checker offers a one-time snapshot.
- Best for: Competitive AI share-of-voice research at scale
- Main limitation: Expensive; no Claude; no agency reporting.
10. Conductor
From Not public (demo only)Conductor positions itself as the enterprise AEO platform: AI visibility tied to traffic and revenue attribution, 24/7 monitoring of how AI bots crawl your site, and LLM-optimized content workflows, all in a governed system of record alongside classic enterprise SEO. It is one of the few platforms tracking Claude. Pricing is entirely demo-gated — no public numbers — and by its own comparison table, the entry Essentials tier includes no AI Search Credits, so meaningful AI-visibility tracking effectively starts at the mid Growth tier.
- Best for: Enterprise SEO + AEO consolidation
- Main limitation: No public pricing; AI tracking starts mid-tier.
Why most AEO tools feel complicated
The clearest pattern from researching this category: before you can compare tools, you have to compare metering models. The complexity is structural, and it shows up in the vendors' own documentation:
- Credit meters: AthenaHQ prices in credits where 1 credit = 1 AI response (3,600/month on its $295 Starter) — every extra prompt, model, and refresh interval is a cost calculation.
- Per-engine add-ons: Otterly charges $9–29/month per additional engine on every tier; Peec caps every self-serve plan at three AI models and charges roughly €30–140 per extra model per month.
- Coverage tiers: Profound's $99 plan tracks ChatGPT only — Claude, Copilot, Grok, and API access require an Enterprise contract, and self-serve plans are billed yearly.
- Demo-gated pricing: Conductor publishes no prices at all, and by its own comparison table the entry tier includes zero AI Search Credits.
- Reporting workarounds: No tool in this comparison documents native white-label reporting — client-ready dashboards mean exporting data to Looker Studio and branding it by hand.
Kaistone's answer is one flow instead of a metering model: run a free first audit, get the four-dimension AEO score with a basic SEO audit included, generate recommendations and a costed white-label proposal — about ten minutes end to end — then let Compare Reports track progress from audit to audit. The pricing fits in one line: from $19 a month, no per-seat fees, no per-engine surcharges.
Choosing AEO tools for agencies
Agency requirements differ from in-house ones in three ways, and most AEO tools were not designed for them:
- Multi-client management: Profound (Agency Mode), Otterly (unlimited workspaces), AthenaHQ, and Scrunch handle multiple clients under one account. Per-domain pricing models like Semrush's get expensive quickly across a client roster.
- Client-ready deliverables: This is the biggest gap. Most tools export raw data to Looker Studio for manual branding. Kaistone delivers white-labeled audits and proposals natively; AthenaHQ's pitch reports are the closest alternative.
- Sales workflow, not just monitoring: Monitoring tells a client where they stand. Selling AEO services requires showing what to fix, what it costs, and what the client gets — audit, recommendations, and a costed proposal. That workflow is Kaistone's core; elsewhere it is assembled by hand.
For the commercial case — margins, retainer expansion, positioning — see Kaistone for SEO agencies.
Free AEO tools worth using
- Kaistone Free AEO Audit: Your first full audit is free, no credit card — AI readability, answer-ready content, trust, and platform presence scored for every AI system, plus a basic SEO audit of technical health, on-page SEO, user experience, and visibility included.
- Kaistone AI Sentiment Checker: Free check of how AI systems perceive your brand — the sentiment behind the answers, before you decide what needs fixing.
- HubSpot AEO Grader: One-time brand snapshot across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Good conversation starter; no site audit and no tracking.
- AthenaHQ free tier: Ongoing monitoring of five AI models with a starter credit allowance — the most generous free monitoring on this list.
- Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker: Free one-time brand mention snapshot across six engines from Ahrefs' prompt database.
- Kaistone Schema Checker: Free schema markup checker — validates the structured data AI systems rely on to parse your site.
Free tools answer "where do we stand?" — the paid question is "what do we do about it, and what is it worth?"
How we evaluated
Every pricing figure, platform list, and feature claim was verified against vendor pricing pages, product pages, and help documentation in July 2026 — not recycled from other listicles. Where a vendor does not document something first-party (several "white-label" claims circulate only in third-party reviews), we say so rather than repeat it. Kaistone is our product; we have kept its entry to the same format as everyone else's and stated its main limitation as plainly as theirs. Vendors change pricing often — if you spot something outdated, tell us and we will fix it.
Frequently asked questions
What are AEO tools?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) tools measure and improve how a brand appears in AI-generated answers from systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude. They typically combine visibility monitoring (how often you are cited), auditing (why you are or aren't cited), and optimization guidance (what to fix). Some, like Kaistone, add agency workflow: turning audit findings into recommendations and client-ready proposals.
What is the best free AEO tool?
Kaistone's first audit is free with no credit card: a full site-level analysis of the signals ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude all rely on, scored on AI readability, answer-ready content, trust, and platform presence. Kaistone also offers a free AI Sentiment Checker and a free Schema Checker. For a quick brand snapshot, HubSpot's AEO Grader covers three engines for free, and AthenaHQ has a free monitoring tier across five AI models.
What is the easiest AEO tool to use?
It depends on what you need to produce. For agencies whose deliverable is a client-ready audit and proposal, Kaistone is built to be the easiest path: first audit free, a four-dimension score, and a costed white-label proposal in about ten minutes — with no credit metering or per-engine configuration. Monitoring-first platforms like Profound, Ahrefs Brand Radar, and AthenaHQ are powerful but require prompt setup, engine selection, and pricing math before the first deliverable exists.
Does Kaistone run test prompts through each AI platform?
No — by design. Monitoring tools sample answers by running synthetic prompts through individual platforms, and those results vary by run, region, and model version. Kaistone audits the source instead: the signals every AI system relies on when it reads and cites a site, grounded in Kaistone's own controlled crawler research (AI Crawler Lab). Fix the source and every platform benefits — including the ones that launch next.
How much do AEO tools cost?
As of July 2026 (verified on vendor pages): Kaistone starts at $19/month, Otterly.AI at $29/month, HubSpot AEO at $50/month (three engines), Peec AI at $95/month, Profound at $99/month (ChatGPT only), and Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit at $99/month per domain. Scrunch starts at $250/month, AthenaHQ at $295/month with a free tier, Ahrefs Brand Radar at $398–699/month, and Conductor does not publish pricing. Watch the meters: credits, per-engine fees, and per-domain pricing can push real costs well above the sticker price.
What is the difference between AEO tools and SEO tools?
SEO tools track rankings and links in traditional search results. AEO tools track citations inside AI-generated answers — a different surface with different signals, such as schema depth, llms.txt, answer-formatted content, and brand entity consistency. The categories are converging from both directions: Semrush, Ahrefs, and Conductor have added AI visibility modules to classic SEO platforms, while Kaistone includes a basic SEO audit (technical health, on-page SEO, user experience, visibility) with every AEO audit at no extra cost.
Is HubSpot's AEO Grader enough for an agency?
As a conversation starter, yes — it is free and takes minutes. As a service foundation, no: it is a one-time snapshot covering three engines, with no tracking over time, no site-level audit of why visibility is low, and no client deliverables. Agencies selling AEO services need continuous tracking, an actionable audit, and client-ready reporting — which is the gap agency-focused platforms fill.
Which AEO tools cover Claude?
Claude coverage is surprisingly rare. Kaistone optimizes for Claude by default — its source-level audit is not limited to specific platforms. Among monitoring tools, Scrunch AI and Conductor include Claude in standard plans; Profound and AthenaHQ cover it on higher or enterprise tiers; Peec AI does not offer it self-serve; and HubSpot AEO, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit, Otterly's core plans, and Ahrefs Brand Radar do not cover it at all.
Which AEO tools offer white-label reports?
Kaistone is built around white-label delivery: agencies upload their logo and colors and deliver both the AEO audit and the project proposal under their own brand. Among the other tools compared, none document native white-label reporting first-party — Otterly explicitly states it has none, and the common workaround elsewhere is exporting data to Looker Studio and branding dashboards manually.